Adar_ICT

I've had a lot of great experiences, and met a lot of great people in CoH. There is only one thing though that stands out in my mind more than anything else in the 5+ years I have been here.

Hearing that Kiyotee had been added to the game, and then seeing him in the tutorial for the first time. Actually, even to this day, seeing him at the end of the tutorial is pretty emotional. That one thing is what made me a loyal fan of this game, and keeps me here, even when I don't play as often. The devs have my eternal thanks.

I vote Foo.

For a few reasons. One, Shia's piece looks like a staged picture that happens to have some action in the background. Two, I find the perspective distracting.

Finally, I just don't like the way the characters are drawn. The scene he is portraying looks great, but it is the details that brings it down for me.

I do think that being lighter adds to it, and Foo's would have been helped by a bit more lightness to his, mainly just to make it easier to see the details. Foo's is done in a style that I'm not terribly fond of, but it is consistent in its use of that style. He seems to have a much better grasp on drawing living beings. I think Foo's could also use a bit more going on in the background to give it an "epic" feel.

Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free, uses very little resources, and works just peachy.

ZoneAlarm Free and AVG Free. Both are free, and very good at what they do.

If you would like to fix your problem rather than switching (although I would suggest switching anyway. The only thing worse than CA is McAffee), you should be able to set an exception to ignore COHUPDATER.EXE and CITYOFHEROES.EXE. It wouldn't surprise me if you still had problems, just because of CA's crappy suite, but it is something to try. Also, make sure that when CA installed, that it disabled the Windows Firewall. Sometimes it doesn't do that, and you end up with a loop where the two firewalls are blocking each other.

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Thanks to everyone that showed up and made the first Strike Force Sunday a success! See y'all same time, two weeks from now.

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Some Strike Force leader YOU are! Starting a minute earlier than the posted start time! I have never been so offended in my entire life!

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PantherShade recognizes sarcasm, and thinks that the Kansas accent made it unclear.

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Sure, like YOU have room to talk. You're from Boston. I grew up in Maine, and even WE thought you Massholes had a messed up accent! So there!

Also, gold star for detecting sarcasm.

Was THAT sarcasm?

The world may never know.

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Ooh, so close!
I'm not FROM Boston, I just live here now.
I was actually brought up in the Midwest.
Thus, I know that many Midwesterners are chosen for TV anchor due to their lack of accent.
My quip about your accent was sarcasm!

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There is no sarcasm on the internet!

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PantherShade recognizes sarcasm, and thinks that the Kansas accent made it unclear.

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Sure, like YOU have room to talk. You're from Boston. I grew up in Maine, and even WE thought you Massholes had a messed up accent! So there!

Also, gold star for detecting sarcasm.

Was THAT sarcasm?

The world may never know.

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Well, weekdays are usually bad for strike / task forces. Fridays are out for me. That leaves Saturday or Sunday. We already have redside Hamidon raids on Saturday evenings. I don't do Hamidon raids, but I know and acknowledge that many people do. So that leaves Sunday evenings.

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So redside should trump blueside? And your convenience is more important than the rest of the population of this server? Sometimes people amaze me with their sense of self-entitlement.

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Uh, no. It was just the only day & time I could regularly run strike forces without alienating the redside Hamidon raiders. I already said that if someone could run this on Fridays or whenever instead, I'd be more than happy to turn the ball over to him / her.

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Sure, backpedal now that I have outed your nefarious plan to monopolize the resources of this fine server!

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Well, weekdays are usually bad for strike / task forces. Fridays are out for me. That leaves Saturday or Sunday. We already have redside Hamidon raids on Saturday evenings. I don't do Hamidon raids, but I know and acknowledge that many people do. So that leaves Sunday evenings.

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So redside should trump blueside? And your convenience is more important than the rest of the population of this server? Sometimes people amaze me with their sense of self-entitlement.

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We're sitting in a meeting and our Development Director said "We've contracted some Type R programmers".

I had never heard this term before, so I jotted it down on my notepad, so I could inquire about it later.

Just then our Lead Engineer asks "What is Type R?"

Our Dev Director looked stumped. "What do you mean?"

"You said 'Type R Programmers'" said the Lead Engineer.

"No, I said 'High Powered'." said the Dev Director.

"No you didn't. You said 'Type R.' See I wrote it down." I said, and showed him my notepad that said "Type R?".

So now, everything high powered and awesome in the office is "Type R".

I am now on a crusade to get it used outside our offices. I should add it to urban dictionary or something.

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What's a 'High Powered' programmer?

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What's your security clearance?

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Well, BaBs is a Type R programmer, which of course means, he is Red security clearance. Obviously, knowing what BaB's security clearance is, is above your own security clearance. Please report to the nearest termination booth.

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It's even more frustrating when you have a dream position (like working on the CoX team would be for me), but you know you'll likely have to take baby steps to get there (knowing full well the franchise might not last forever). Oh well, a fellow can dream.

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Honestly, working at a game company is crap. I tried it once and completely hated it. If you're a designer you have to sacrifice your creativity for functionality and if you're a programmer or artist you generally work under unrealistic deadlines and without solid development plans because the designers are spewing last minute changes at you :P

Now I'm the head of product development for a defense contractor - much more seriouspants job but I love it a lot more because I actually get to spend time with my wife.

Unfortunately working at a game company, at least for me, didn't leave me a lot of time for work/life balance.

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I wouldn't say it is restricted to game companies. And QA, while being a great way to get into the field, is not a fun job. I take that back, it CAN be fun, but it also involves a ton of overtime, and can be very stressful. I work for a very large software firm. I spent 3 years in tech support, 4 as a QA Lead, and the past 6 years as a senior lab tech (basically a combination of tech support for tech support, and QA, with numerous special projects thrown in). The QA part of my job is the worst. Granted, where I work, our release schedule is not really normal, as we have a new full release once a week. Regardless, any software company, is going to have numerous projects going at the same time, and a lot of times, you have all of those projects being "top priority". I used to work about 80 hours a week, and was on-call almost all the time. I can't tell you how many times I had to either be on a conference call, or actually come in to the office at 3AM.

On the plus side, a QA tester gets a ton of experience. Most QA testers end up interacting with the programmers quite a bit, so even if you aren't a programmer, you learn how things work. The other drawback to being QA, at least as an entry position, is that QA testers don't generally get paid a whole lot.

I do actually love doing QA work. Finding problems, and FIGURING out why those problems happen, and what fixes there are, is very rewarding to me. The problem a lot of times is, for every QA tester you have that is good at thinking outside the box, you have 5 or 10 who are only good for handing a test script to, and have them run through it and write up anything that doesn't give the expected results.

How could they remove the chicken tug??? This completely screws up all of my fantastic RP arcs! Why do the devs hate RP??? I pay $15/month, I should be able to play the way I want! If this change is permanent, I may have to cancel my account! We'll see how long CoX lasts THEN!

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It's not necroposting, I've wanted this since 06 and it's still not in.

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You are a big meaniehead.

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Someone said the video was uniformative, hm, oooookaaaay?

Let's see, it's the first of 3 planned webisodes so no, it wouldn't cover everything but it did cover farming and making challenging content.

It also answered the question on whether players would get paid for their content and what they could do if they didn't like it.

It implies that you can put multiple missions within an arc and control how many enemies a player can go up against.

It goes into what not to expect as MA rewards.


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Are you being serious?

LOL

It amounts to a few vague hints at best. I already knew that I wouldn't be able to create a mission to rescue a cat from a tree, thanks.

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The first mission I am making is to save a kitten (catgirl) from a tree.

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As of an issue or two ago, the -renderthread 1 flag is enabled by default.

However, the game will not use more than 2 cores.

In other words, no, you'll need to seek other causes for your framerate issues. Best bet is to post dxdiag and hijackthis logs to a new thread in the tech forum.

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On a quad core box can you use 2 each in a dualboxing scenario?

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Yes an no. You can set affinity for two separate installs of CoX, so that each one will only use two specific procs. Not sure how well it works though. Never tried it, as I only have one machine that could do that and it is my wife's machine, so I seldom mess with it.

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Okay,
So I dual Booted win7 last night, and had no issues at all. Game loaded beutifully (after I updated my nvidia drives of course). This thing runs fast. I have never used a 64 bit OS before, so can anyone tell me: with the 64 bit OS is there always a 32 and 64 bit browser? I was a little bummed that there was, at least it appeared that way, flash support for the 64 bit IE..

edit: also, I am running it on an E6600 with 2GB of ram and an 8800 gts 640mb...
no noticeable lag at all...
Windows 7 has my money (as long as it only improves) when it goes to shelves.

I did notice something though... the .iso was named as ultimate...does that mean they are messing with us (stupid microsoft advertising campaign to get people to like vista) or are there going to be flavors like vista has?

[/ QUOTE ]Just like vista with all the editions.

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Last I read, they had pared it down to 3 editions only. Premium, Business, and Ultimate. No more Basic or Enterprise. That may not be valid now though. They were supposed to have announced the SKUs at CES, but I haven't had time to go check it.

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Hey again guys... this time I have a totally different issue.

So my friend gave me his laptop that he doesn't use anymore. It's an Acer, which I know isn't fantastic (and it's Vista >_&lt, but the specs are good... 1.6ghz dual core. Upon getting it, I went straight to canyourunit.com and checked to see if it could run City of Heroes. I was extremely happy when I saw it said that I could run it well above recommended. I tried to play the game, though, and it's far lower than the site said it should be.

My character's sitting in Talos right now aiming at the floor, 1024x768 resolution, using the "usetexenvcombine" and "compatiblecursors" settings... and I'm hovering at 5-6 FPS. Everything is as low as it can be, and it's horrible. It's worse than minimum, and canyourunit says I can play well above recommended. What's going on?

Here's what I've done.

- Vista tweaks to lower CPU usage (including disabling Aero/Themes Service)
- Defrag
- Complete reformat of harddrive
- Fresh install
- Lowering resolution (didn't change a thing)
- Removed ANYTHING that didn't have to be there in terms of services/programs running
- Correctly deleted old drivers (uninstall utility/restart in safe mode/driver sweeper/restart again), got new drivers from Acer website (I know that you can't get the right drivers from ATI... you have to go to Acer)

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks...

I really don't know what to do with this one.

EDIT: Oh, btw, the laptop is called an Acer Aspire 5100... and here's a link to what canyourunit gives me:

http://i39.tinypic.com/2vn2dfs.png

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Ignore the canyourunit thing. That video card is not going to cut it.

Your best bet, is to go to here and get teh Mobility Modder program. Then go to ATI's site and download the latest drivers. When picking, just select Vista 32 bit, then Radeon, then like the x1600 or something. Doesn't matter as long as it is a radeon. Follow the instructions on the Mobility Modder page for how to fix the official drivers so that you can install them on your laptop.

That will at least give you the latest actual drivers, which should help, but not much. The rest of your computer is fine, but the video card is just a huge huge bottleneck, and it is unlikely you are going to get even 20FPS other than within a mission.

You are already doing the things you need to, as far as the usetexenvcombine. Make sure that you are using the advanced graphics settings in CoX itself. Set the particle physics as low as possible, and the number of particles as low as possible.

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Thats not me by the way!

The thing I was wondering, is why did they drop the "special temp powers"(dont remember what they were called) that were available in D last yer? One (I THINK) was Nectar of something or other, and they were for the co-op mission. Be nice to have those back.

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The Nectar, Drop of Vitality, and Drop of somethingorother, were temp powers you bought for the Valentine's Snaptooth mission, not Winter Event.

Or at least I don't remember ever having them for the WInter event.

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As for the slopes. . . I must be the worst since no matter what last year I couldnt get the gold. . . I think I played it for like 3 hours and gave up in frustration. . .

Hmmm, time to bust out those 300 candy canes and see if i can buy a gold medal. . . (insert evil laugh here)

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I had a heck of a time getting the gold last year, mainly because I never asked for help in the form of speed boosts. Since I used super jump for my travel power, and am not terribly coordinated, I would miss the gold by tiny amounts. Finally got it though. From what people were saying, speed boost made it lots easier.

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So, where did people see that there were 4 new badges? All I saw was Frostbitten that was new. Are their 3 new badges to go with the new ski slope, aside from the three from the prior ski slopes?

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Yes, there are 3 new badges to go with the "enhanced ski run", in addition to the 3 from the "expert slopes" last year.

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Sweet. I'm always happy for more badges. The new slopes look cool.

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Well, there went about 60 from my rec'd/sent boxes. Didn't realize I'd collected that much detrious.

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I'm trying to recall the things that kept Lady_Athnya in giggles for a couple months...

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*cry*

I deleted all mine too. Oh the pain, oh the loss, oh the humanity!

Oh well, y'all will have to be funny again. And soon. Get busy!

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I'm not allowed to be funny. You should know that.

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So, where did people see that there were 4 new badges? All I saw was Frostbitten that was new. Are their 3 new badges to go with the new ski slope, aside from the three from the prior ski slopes?

The universal travel enhancements and the auras will be cool. I've still got all the temp powers from last year's event on several characters, so it looks like one badge, the enhancements and the auras are the only things I need this time around.

I am very much looking forward to the new slope. Skiing is so much fun. I DID hate getting the gold medal badge last year though. My main is a super jumper, and I am personally not very coordinated, so it was a pain getting that badge.

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It sounds like a half-hearted appeasement to me, and I don't like the way it was 'thrown' out there. It felt insincere. And, for good measure, it angers and offends me. I still have not seen nor heard some type of end justification as to why PvP 2.0 is there, or what it means to future gaming. As a paying customer / investor in this little escape, I would like to hear or read the reasons as to why.

But with my mood lately with the disappointment of Issue 12 and now this?
You can put potpourri on fecal matter, but at the end of the day its still fecal matter.

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They have stated their reasons for the changes. They are trying to get PVP to appeal to a larger audience. The fact that it alienated the existing PVP player didn't escape their notice, but they apparently believe these changes will end up in a net gain in PVP players. The fact that you are angered and offended over this... well, sorry. I think you take the game far too seriously if you are that bothered by it.

The fact that you pay for access to the game does not mean you get any voice in the development of said game. You are not an "investor". You are a customer. One single customer. You can influence the development of the game by either paying your subscription, or not paying your subscription if you feel the game is going in the wrong direction.

Do I think you should shut up? Well, on a personal level, yes, but only because I get tired of the incessant whining on this subject. However, I do NOT presume to TELL you to shut up. You have every right to voice your opinions, just as I do. Honestly I have no vested interest in PVP. I have never understood the appeal of it as more than a side benefit for when I want something else to do. Ever since the changes were made, I have watched player after player basically guarantee that they are going to be ignored, by acting like spoiled brats. There are a number of PVP people who have remained calm and logical in their explanations of why they feel the changes were bad. I feel badly for them that they were not able to make more of an influence. Those are the kind of people though that are more likely to MAKE an effect, in the long term, if not the short term. Whining and being "offended" and essentially saying "I'm taking my toys and going home!" is not exactly a mature way to get anything accomplished.

As far as the arena thing being a half-hearted appeasement... I really have no clue why people have to read something negative into everything. They have already said that PVP 2.0 is the way things are going to be. Yes, adding these options back into the Arena IS an appeasement. Rather than seeing it as a half-hearted thing, or a "slap in the face", why is it that people can't see it as what it appears to me: an attempt to give the players at least some of what they want, WITHOUT forcing the devs to backtrack on the path they have decided on.

Take these comments however you like. I don't truly mean to be offensive, though I know it will come across that way. I just can't think of any way to be particularly nice about it. Also, this is not directed only to you. There are any number of people my comments apply to.

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Hi Adar_ICT - in Catalyst you can, in fact, create your own profile with your preferred settings for CoX, that you can select before you play the game (and switch after finished playing. That of course isn't pre-selected optimizations, but it does put that selection in your hands vs. taking something "cooked".
We also recently launched that functionality with a separate gaming tool you may be interested in called Fusion. It is a utility which at the click of a button can shut down all non-essential background programs, freeing up system resources to improve gameplay. You can also customize it to build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. Fusion is also hooked into Catalyst as well as our overclocking utlility, OverDrive. Fusion is in BETA stage right now, but can be downloaded for folks to try out - only one stipulation: becasue of all the system-level optimizations built in this can only work on an AMD platform (AMD CPU + ATI graphics).

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Hmm... Guess I will have to look at my CCC, as I don't remember anything for using profiles for various games. If that exists, then I am just unobservant, and will now be quietly happy that i can do what I wanted to do.

When you say Fusion only works with AMD CPU and ATI graphics, does it actually do a check for that and prevent you from using the program if you have an Intel CPU with ATI graphics? I understand that there will be optimizations that only work with AMD CPUs, but if I can still use the utility to tweak JUST the graphics portion, and background apps, that would be a cool utility. In any case, I have downloaded it and will give it a shot tonight probably. I am, unfortunately, at work right now so I can't just test it myself yet.

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions here.